Question for you: how cool would it be if every caregiver, every healthcare employee,
frontline or manager, had something good to say about you in front of your patients and
families every time you connected? Well, there is a way. Hi, this is Brian Lee, healthcare’s
engagement expert and founder of Custom Learning Systems. This Managing Up tutorial is number
6 of our 8-part series called the License to Please Empowerment Bundle and a key way
we communication our vision of kindness care everywhere. Don't you just hate being thrown
under the bus by a co-worker for something you didn’t even do? Ugh. What if we were
to reverse this plot and you were to receive a compliment from your peers and co-workers
every time you connected with a patient? Well, we can and should. It's called managing up.
Today it’s presented by my colleague and friend David Dworski. Let's listen in. Let
us introduce you to the concept of managing up. I recently overheard a story about a nurse
who told her patient “I’m sorry about the food today, it doesn’t look very good
does it?” What possible benefit is there to create a negative patient expectation about
a service, a person, or a team? Let's define the idea, the concept, the practice, of managing
up. It's the business of creating a positive expectation about a person, about a team,
about a service, prior or during a patient/family experience, especially during a handoff. Handing
off your patient to another nurse, handing off your patient to another department, handing
off your patient to go to another department for a service to be rendered. For example,
turning your patient over to the folks in imaging, where a series of picture would be
taken. Let's compare managing up as being way better than managing down, which gets
into negativity and defeatism, and has absolutely no place in our hospital. Just for your reference,
interesting number here, in the typical 3-day inpatient stay, there are approximately 60+
handoffs or moments of truth. Here's what a moment of truth is. It’s any interaction
in which a patient comes into contact with you and your hospital, and gets a sense of
how good you are at what you do. Moments of truth can be seen in this graphic on your
screen. For example, these are the moments of truth all together in what comprises a
hospital’s cycle of service in an emergency room. From the moment they arrive in the emergency
room, at about where the number 12 would be on a clock, all the way around, all the services
that have to be given as someone is taken care of while they are in the good hands of
the good people in the ER. This is a cycle of service, and every interaction is a moment
of truth. The reward strategy that we advocate is to always provide the best experience the
patient can afford to get at every moment of contact. A terrific reward opportunity
is to manage up the patient’s next encounter with a team member of yours, with a physician
or provider who’s coming on duty or is now going to take care of that patient, another
department that they’re going to be going to for a service, or the hospital from a clinic;
you’re managing up your hospital or you’re managing up a clinic the patient is going
to. You can also manage up yourself or your colleagues. It goes like this. Here's how
you might manage up a team member: “good news, Mrs Goodberry, Jana is your nurse for
the morning shift. She's a dedicated nurse who’s worked here for over 15 years. She's
friendly, smart, and I predict you’ll enjoy her care.” Did you see how managing up works?
Do you see how expectations are set? Mrs. Goodberry is looking forward to meeting Jana.
Here's how to manage up a physician or provider. Mrs. Mullen, your physician is Dr. Friesen.
She’s a highly-regarded provider with a kind bedside manner. Her patients always have
great things to say about her, and I know you will value her care”. Managing up, so
now Mrs. Mullen is looking forward to meeting Dr. Friesen if she comes with this great reference.
Managing up a department, “Mrs. Stel, we’re sending you to our radiology department in
a few minutes. They are well known for their quality work and warm and welcoming ways.
You're going to enjoy the people down in imaging”. Managing up. Managing up the hospital from
a clinic. So someone’s been in a clinic and now they’re coming to do their surgery
at your hospital. So you might say “I’m glad to see you’re having your surgery at
Mercy Hospital, Mr. Miller. I had my hernia operation there last year and everyone was
just great”. So managing up the hospital. They're coming from a clinic to your hospital.
This person’s saying wonderful things about your hospital and how well they were treated.
First impressions. “Framing effects perceptions. How we frame what we say effects perceptions.
The first impression most patients have about our healthcare organization comes from us”,
says Teira Gunlock. P.S., by the way, don't forget to manage up yourself. You can do it.
It's nothing wrong with doing this. For example, you might say if you’re a respiratory therapist,
you say to a patient “I’ve been a respiratory therapist here for 7 years and I just love
what I do. Matter of fact, I work hard to stay up to date on the latest skills and technologies
so I’m at the top of my game. You can use AIDET and SERVE, which we talked about in
another webinar, for more ideas on how you can manage yourself up. Here’s a cautionary
note, however, don’t overdo managing up so it creates an unrealistic expectation that
can’t be realized, and don’t make fun of a fellow caregiver even in jest. When you
are managing up, do do these things. You do need to be sincere. There's no need to memorize
what to say if it comes from your heart. You do need to manage up beforehand to create
positive anticipation. You do want to make positive comments in front of the caregiver
where appropriate. If you’re handing off your care to another caregiver, talk about
that caregiver; “name’s Irene”, in front of the patient, in front of Irene. Very positive,
very empowering. So, what you want to do also is to share your positive personal experiences,
if you can. If you’ve availed yourselves of the services of a department where one
of your patients is going, you might want to share your good experience when you were
last in that department. That's managing up as well. The benefits of managing up are many.
They include the fact that you are setting expectations toward a positive experience.
You're highlighting the competencies and the skills of these new team members a patient
is about to meet, and this assists in diminishing patients’ fears of the unknown. It creates
confidence in the outcome which contributes to healing. More benefits. It also promotes
the capabilities of a department which might be shy about tooting its own horn. Great,
skillful clinicians in the next department, but they’re all, you know, they don’t
toot their own horns that much and you can do it for ‘em. It also creates a self-fulfilling
prophecy. You say “they’re good people down there”, your patient’s gonna say
“boy, they really were a great gang of folks down there and they took good care of me”;
And also, it feels good to speak highly of your co-workers, and last and mot importantly,
you do it because it works. As Mark Twain said, braggin’ ain’t braggin’ if you’ve
done it. So, summarizing managing up expectations, the system of managing up if useful when setting
expectations for timeliness of service. Things will happen on time in that department. Relief
from pain, managing up the discharge process, we’re gonna get you ready to go home so
you can really take care of yourself well and heal at home. Service recovery, let me
set things to right. Ms. McMann, I’m sorry things went off the tracks, I’m gonna fix
it for you, and so many other practical ways that you can manage up to set or reset expectations.
So our do-it recommendations are these. That you draft a sentence of two about how you
can manage up yourself, how you can toot your own horn. In a nice way you can tell people
what your experience is, how many years, how much you have done of this work at this hospital,
and what you’re really good at as a benefit. That you’re careful with this, with taking
care of them, or taking care of their room, and you can also talk about what I love to
do, which helps patients and family members feel confident and in good hands when you’re
in charge. You can make a list of the moments of truth that happen when you hand off your
patients to others. Talk about and manage up the moment of truth. Who their doctor is
and how I will be available for them as soon as they come out of recovery after surgery;
and a success strategy when handing off. What I’m going to say that makes them understand
and set expectations for successful outcomes for whatever it is we are providing by way
of a service; and our last do-it recommendations, that with a partner you practice managing
up for each moment of truth during a cycle of service and that you know the success strategy
you want to achieve, the expectations you want to set; and we suggest you have fun by
continuously improving your professional practice of managing up, because it works! Well, I
trust you found this micro-webinar helpful. My special thanks to David for his insights
and his ideas, and his recommendations. To support you in your goal of transforming your
culture of renters to owners and patient advocates, I’d like you to have this license to please
tool kit. In addition to a step-by-step guide to implement this module, it comes complete
with a total of 7 more engagement tools that provide a step-by-step guidance to help you
make this concept a reality. Yours just for the asking by checking on the link below.
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as much and as often as you want. Thanks so much for watching, this is Brian Lee, healthcare’s
engagement expert saying let’s go spread kindness care, and let’s do it everywhere.